An introduction to text mining

1. What is text mining?

Text mining (also called text data mining or text analytics) is,
at its simplest, a method for drawing out content based on
meaning and context from a large body (or bodies) of text. Or,
put another way, it is a method for gathering structured
information from unstructured text. It is via text mining
tools, for example, that many spam filters detect unwanted emails
from your inbox, and how companies can anticipate, rather than
simply react to, their customer needs by sifting through masses
of seemingly unrelated data and discovering meaningful
relationships. Text mining also has significant potential for
academic application and, at least when used in its basic form,
benefits from being a relatively straightforward and easy tool to
master.